It is now 5 months since my hair transplant, is it normal and I am very worried about the growth. Is the surgery a failure or can I expect more growth?

I tell my patients that hair growth often starts between three to five months and then keeps growing at a rate of about a half inch per month. By the eighth month, you should see 80 percent of the growth you expect and at 12 months you should see 95 percent of the growth. Just be patient for a few more months and wait it out. If you had a good doctor and a good surgical team, then the grafts will grow.

Would you tell me what you think of this article?  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22375859

I get these types of emails from many patients. I have no idea what they mean except for the rat. There is no evidence that this is a problem in humans who take Finasteride.

This handsome young man had a hair loss consultation with me because he believed he was losing his frontal hairline.  He came to see me because he thinks he is losing about 100 hairs each day.  As part of the examination, we used the HAIRCHECK instrument to determine if he was losing hair anywhere on his head. The examination showed no miniaturization anywhere on the scalp.  The photos below show his hairline is moving to the mature position with a widows peak still present. His hairline probably moved up about 1.4 inches which left the widows peak present.  The HAIRCHECK instrument showed he had no hair loss.

Here is a link that is a good review of hair loss causes, treatments and future possibilities.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317788.php

Tom decided to have Scalp MicroPigmentation but his original efforts to tackle balding started with his first hair transplant when he was 19 years-old.  Now at 47, he reports on the real price he paid for a poor decision when the technology was very primitive some 30 years ago. A hair transplant on any genetically balding 19 year-old male is considered malpractice today.  The quality of Tom’s life was negatively impacted by his hair transplant due to the terrible results.  Not only was the technology of 30 years ago poor but the doctor never treated him as a human being and never told him what he was getting into. Most of the old “plugs” didn’t even grow, left him with scars and made him self-conscious about his appearance for 30 years.

“I want to take the time and thank you for liberating me. I have been wearing hair systems for almost 17 years and the thought of not being burdened by the discomfort or constant maintenance of wearing it anymore is priceless. The hair system cost me thousands of dollars over the years. Having SMP is one of the best decisions that I have made. I no longer worry about my scalp, my hair system or the money I had to pay out every couple of years for a new hair system”.

 

The FUE Megasession seems to be more and more common lately and will lead to depleted donor area hair enough to produce balding. Newer doctors n the field seem to be offering larger FUE sessions once they think that they have mastered the FUE. It has become a marketing tool as many doctors from around the world (Turkey, India, Iran) are now routinely performing 3000-6000 FUE graft procedures at low prices. Large session FUEs is a way to control this expanding market for their services. The questions you as a consumer should ask:

1- Will the patient be bald in the back of his head due to large number of FUE grafts and what can go wrong?

2- What is the risk of necrosis in the donor area?

3- What does this do for the future needs of the patient who continues to bald?

Most of the patients who have these large procedures (3000-6000 graft FUE procedures) will develop a see-through donor area and many of them will become, frankly, almost bald in the back of the head. The risks of scalp necrosis is high when grafts are extracted that are too close to each other. I just published an article in the HAIR TRANSPLANT FORUM that addresses these issues. People of Asian, African or middle eastern decent are at greater risk for the above listed problems (because of their lower hair densities in the donor area) than Northern Europeans. I have written this post as a warning to my readership that everything you read about Large FUE Sessions is fraught with problems.  See the following posts that show some of these problems:

• https://baldingblog.com/2016/12/13/fue-forms-punctate-small-scars-100-time-sometimes-scars-large/
• https://baldingblog.com/2017/05/12/4000-fue-grafts-now-balding-back-head/
• https://baldingblog.com/2017/05/09/picture-depleted-donor-area-fue/

I also showed the recipient area. Note that the grafts have a wavy line pattern, like soldiers lined up in an empty field. This can be seen when the hair grows out in people with a strong hair character. An artist knows that hair grafts are naturally randomly distributed throughout the scalp without any pattern. Only doctors or inexperienced technicians make patterns in the recipient area.

 

I was hoping that you’d be able to give me some feedback on my situation. I have been on Finasteride for the last 12 months of so, to counteract frontal loss. I have continued to thin out all over in the past year. I tried to remain diligent.. In this 12 month period, I’ve had a couple of 2-3 week breaks, changing from 1mg to 1mg  and then 0.5mg. I was curious as to whether you feel that this could be the cause of my thinning? Otherwise, am I a non responder? and in this case, do I have anything to benefit from trying avodart? Currently, i’m not taking rogaine as i do not want to be reliant on using it. My current plan is to use 1mg finasteride EVERY day, for the next three months, to hopefully see some benefits. Thanks for your insight, it’s incredibly appreciated.

On people who do not respond to finasteride, I may try dutasteride, but usually the non-respoders don’t respond to dutasteride either. You may be getting some benefit, like slowing down the thinning, but it is possible that you can’t break the cycle you are heading to. That is why hair transplantation works, especially in those people who can’t get response from medications.